News Verbatim pledges 'stable supply of optical disks' after Sony Japan's recordable Blu-ray exit

[Admin]

Verbatim has pledged to continue supporting the recordable optical media market in Japan after Sony's manufacturing closure.

Verbatim pledges 'stable supply of optical disks' after Sony Japan's recordable Blu-ray exit : Read more

 

[bit_user]

a 4K writer equipped with Ultra HD Blu-ray playback and powered by a USB cable.

That's interesting. I haven't been following PC-based blu-ray playback very closely, but I had the impression drives were dropping the capability to play the 4k UHD discs, leading to community archives around old firmware images and flashing instructions, for restoring the capability to drives that once had it.

@thestryker , I think this is something you know about? Did I get that right?

 

[RTX 2080]

That's interesting. I haven't been following PC-based blu-ray playback very closely, but I had the impression drives were dropping the capability to play the 4k UHD discs, leading to community archives around old firmware images and flashing instructions, for restoring the capability to drives that once had it.

@thestryker , I think this is something you know about? Did I get that right?

I actually know a bit about that.

There was this guy on the makemkv forums who’s business was buying up certain UHD optical drives that had unlocked flashable firmware and setting them up so that they can rip UHD movies to your personal digital library. I bought a few of them from him.

He closed up shop at the end of 2024, saying that they are no longer going to manufacture drives with unlocked firmware, so get them while you can.

So yeah, both the ability to read/write optical media and the optical media itself is becoming more and more scarce.

I wonder how much longer it’ll be before the big studios stop releasing movies on UHD/Blu Ray entirely.

 

[magbarn]

I actually know a bit about that.

There was this guy on the makemkv forums who’s business was buying up certain UHD optical drives that had unlocked flashable firmware and setting them up so that they can rip UHD movies to your personal digital library. I bought a few of them from him.

He closed up shop at the end of 2024, saying that they are no longer going to manufacture drives with unlocked firmware, so get them while you can.

So yeah, both the ability to read/write optical media and the optical media itself is becoming more and more scarce.

I wonder how much longer it’ll be before the big studios stop releasing movies on UHD/Blu Ray entirely.

That's just sad, even on a 55" OLED, the quality difference between a good clean UHD disc and streaming is still huge with tons of artifacts on the streamed version.

 

[LuxZg]

Got to say, I won't be missing any of it. Blu-ray was the only widely used tech I skipped between late 80's and now, and I even used 5.25" floppies 😅 ok, have to admit, my son was gifted 2 games for PS5 on physical discs, but if it was me, I'd rather they gave him a download voucher 🙄 swapping discs to switch to another game is just such a 90's throwback. I was torn between rolling eyes and chuckling when reading that Nero line 😂🤮

 

[stuff and nonesense]

I use both streaming and Blu-ray. When I want to annoy my neighbours by turning up my aged Yamaha DSP A-5 and making noise using 5.1 a dvd/blu ray is awesome. Samsung nerf 5.1 data transfer unless it’s eARC.

Streamed video is close to the quality of Blu-ray but it can be smeary, muddy on screen (55” S95b) Blu-ray is clean and sharp.

I own my dvd/blu ray discs. They will play when the movies have disappeared from the streaming merry go round..

It will be a sad day when optical devices disappear. I do appreciate that streaming is convenient, that £10 per month gets you many more movies than you may want to buy, movies that you watch just because they are there however having a really nice copy of a film with minimal artifacting that fully plays through good if aged hardware is priceless (or upto £15 at HMV).

 

[stuff and nonesense]

Re the above, I’m not an enthusiast. I do feel saddened that the march to “you will own nothing” is increasing in pace.

 

[LuxZg]

Re the above, I’m not an enthusiast. I do feel saddened that the march to “you will own nothing” is increasing in pace.

I agree with this sentiment. It bugs me less with movies, as I rarely watch them multiple times. It is a great deal bigger issue with music and software (games in particular). Price we pay for convenience...

 

[dimar]

I've been buying Verbatim discs anyway, especially M-Disc type.

 

[bit_user]

That's just sad, even on a 55" OLED, the quality difference between a good clean UHD disc and streaming is still huge with tons of artifacts on the streamed version.

That's going to depend a lot on the stream/service and network congestion. If you have a good connection, it's plausible you could get a stream with bitrates in the same ballpark as a UHD blu-ray. That said, I don't know what kind of bitrates the different streaming services are currently offering, in the best case.

One thing you might try is to make sure your wifi isn't the bottleneck. I didn't imagine mine was, but then it actually turned out to be.

 

[bit_user]

It is a great deal bigger issue with music and software (games in particular). Price we pay for convenience...

I do most of my listening via streaming, but I do have the intention to go back and buy physical copies of music I discover that I really like. Unfortunately, it's an intention I find I'm rarely acting upon.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

That's going to depend a lot on the stream/service and network congestion. If you have a good connection, it's plausible you could get a stream with bitrates in the same ballpark as a UHD blu-ray. That said, I don't know what kind of bitrates the different streaming services are currently offering, in the best case.

One thing you might try is to make sure your wifi isn't the bottleneck. I didn't imagine mine was, but then it actually turned out to be.

Whether it’s any of the network problems you describe or simply bad compression Blu-ray is far superior to streamed video.

 

[RTX 2080]

That's going to depend a lot on the stream/service and network congestion. If you have a good connection, it's plausible you could get a stream with bitrates in the same ballpark as a UHD blu-ray. That said, I don't know what kind of bitrates the different streaming services are currently offering, in the best case.

One thing you might try is to make sure your wifi isn't the bottleneck. I didn't imagine mine was, but then it actually turned out to be.

I have a 1 Gigabit wired ethernet connection going straight to my TV and streaming quality is still significantly worse than for a physical blu ray or UHD.

The issue is that the streaming services don’t make the effort to create high-enough bitrate versions of their media to take full advantage of faster internet connections. Beyond that, they don’t seem to devote enough compute to use high-quality compression algorithms, so the result looks poor even with a very fast internet connection.

 

[bit_user]

Whether it’s any of the network problems you describe or simply bad compression Blu-ray is far superior to streamed video.

The key difference being that streaming quality isn't fixed. Network speeds have been on the increase and it's reasonable to expect this will continue. Meanwhile encoding costs decrease. So, my expectation is that you'll probably see a crossover point, where at least some of the streaming services available to you offer comparable quality to UHD blu-rays.

BTW, I've seen some very clean transfers of old movies on streaming. I think they have a lot of incentive to reduce scratches, dust, noise, excessive grain, and improve frame alignment. In contrast, I've bought some blu-rays from as recently as a dozen years ago that have markedly worse looking transfers. Some of the early blu-rays even look kind of bad - don't forget that the standard allows for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 compression, in addition to H.264.

So, just because you're watching a blu-ray of something is by no means a guarantee that you'll see the best quality. I guess where blu-ray might have the greatest advantage is in the realm of audio.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

Got to disagree. Even at a mere 75Mb/s it’s still muddy compared to Blu-ray. People are accepting reduced quality as a price for convenience.

That said it’s incomparable wrt 625 line Interlaced PAL.

 

[bit_user]

Got to disagree. Even at a mere 75Mb/s it’s still muddy compared to Blu-ray. People are accepting reduced quality as a price for convenience.

There are so many variables, here. We might be talking about completely different things. A 75 Mb/s stream can look gorgeous, depending on how it's encoded. Done badly, anything can look like rubbish.

I found this list of scans from actual released UHD blu-rays. Bit rates seem to range mostly from about 50 to 65 Mbps, with a few outliers as low as 35 and one as high as 86. So, if you're actually getting 75 Mbps bitstreams, then I'd blame your streaming provider.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=14584879&postcount=45
​

That said it’s incomparable wrt 625 line Interlaced PAL.

Not sure what you were referring to - you mean blu-ray? UHD or just regular?

FYI it's 625 line intervals per frame, but 576 active lines and 288 per field.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

found this list of scans from actual released UHD blu-rays. Bit rates seem to range mostly from about 50 to 65 Mbps, with a few outliers as low as 35 and one as high as 86. So, if you're actually getting 75 Mbps bitstreams, then I'd blame your streaming provider.

And that’s what I’m saying, the pictures as provided by streaming providers aren’t as good…

The second part is that they pull the movies from their platform as their licence expires or in the case off Amazon they take them out of Prime and put them behind a paywall.

I have physical copies on blu ray and dvd, streaming service providers can’t take those from me.

 

[bit_user]

I have physical copies on blu ray and dvd, streaming service providers can’t take those from me.

They can actually stop producing players which support the encryption keys used to encode those discs, rendering those discs unplayable on new BD players and ones which've had their firmware upgraded.

This is something they threatened to do, as/when encryption keys leaked. I'm not sure they've ever made good on this threat, but be aware that the only way people have managed to rip blu-rays is through leaked keys or non-compliant HDMI devices. Nobody has cracked the actual encryption algorithm, like what happened with DVDs.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

STREAMING service providers can’t take those from me.

I know about updates to Blu-ray players and encryption keys. If my disks and everyone else’s stopped working there would be a little bit of a backlash methinks.

 

[bit_user]

STREAMING service providers can’t take those from me.

I know about updates to Blu-ray players and encryption keys. If my disks and everyone else’s stopped working there would be a little bit of a backlash methinks.

I'm with you on the benefits of media ownership. Just trying to point out some details, here and there.

I have a fairly large collection of DVDs and Blu-rays. Lots of 3D blu-rays, which is another sad subject. Only a handful of UHD blu-rays. Recently, there was actually one blu-ray I made sure to buy as soon as it came out, because I was worried about the potential for a lawsuit to eliminate its availability via streaming or otherwise!

 

[RTX 2080]

They can actually stop producing players which support the encryption keys used to encode those discs, rendering those discs unplayable on new BD players and ones which've had their firmware upgraded.

This is something they threatened to do, as/when encryption keys leaked. I'm not sure they've ever made good on this threat, but be aware that the only way people have managed to rip blu-rays is through leaked keys or non-compliant HDMI devices. Nobody has cracked the actual encryption algorithm, like what happened with DVDs.

Which is why people have been using drives with flashable firmware and makemkv to rip blu ray and UHD disks so that instead of having locked discs that may not be supported in the future, you can instead have a collection of unlocked video files stored on a hard drive that will always be accessible to you no matter what happens with blu ray discs and drives in the future.